On the Use (and Abuse) of the Land

 

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a much-beloved book, and for very good reasons.  If people approached the world as the author does, many of our species-wide issues would disappear.  And Kimmerer is largely optimistic about our ability to change the damage we have done to our planet.  She is realistic about the hole we are in but also realizes that if we have the power to destroy nature, then we also have the power to restore it. 

But when I take a step back, I wonder about certain things.  Since she lives in Syracuse, she uses the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) for many of her examples of excellent stewardship of the natural world.  Yet everything I have ready about Haudenosaunee villages says that after two generations, the land would be depleted of natural resources and the village would be moved.  Such a site is near my house: it was a large Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ (Cayuga) village, inhabited in the late 1500s, abandoned, and then re-inhabited on a smaller scale in the 1600s. 

I wonder if this is true, or simply conventional academic wisdom about Haudenosaunee land use.  I do not know.  But it certainly runs against the grain of what this book tells us.